Honors intro to Theatre -Test1

Drama vs. Theatre

Drama refers to the script, theatre is an event

What is required to have theatre?

Actors, script, audience, and place

Origins of theatre

Some critics believe that theatre was a natural progression from storytelling

Theatre conventions

Place, time, acting, the mask

“Jobs” often available in theatre

Playwright, producer, director, designers, technical director, actors, theatre manager, publicist, audience, theatre critics

Theatre events we are studying this semester

Macbeth, you can't take it with you, raisin in the sun, Hamilton

Definition of soliloquy

Act of speaking one’s thoughts aloud when by oneself or regardless of any hearers

Definition of an aside

Remark or passage in a play that is intended to be heard by the audience but unheard by other characters in the play

Unique conventions

Conventions that have faded away; different western and eastern theatre conventions of different cultures

Theatre is…

Plural

Name the plays we are studying

Macbeth, Hamilton, A raisin in the Sun, you can't take it with you

Characters of Macbeth

King Duncan, Macbeth, banquo, 3 witches, lady Macbeth, Malcolm, fleance

Characters of A raisin in the Sun

Lena younger, Walter (son), Ruth (wife), Travis (grandson), beneatha (daughter), Mr. Lindner

Characters of Hamilton

Hamilton, Schuyler sisters, Aaron burr, Lafayette, mulligans, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, King George

Characters of you can't take it with you

Grandpa martin Vanderhof, Penny, Paul sycamore, Mr. Depinna, Essie, Boris Kolenkhov, Ed Carmichael, Alice, Tony Kirby, the Kirby’s

Playwrights

William Shakespeare, George S. Kaufman, Lorraine Hansberry, Lin Manuel Miranda

Where are the plays located?

Ancient Scotland- Macbeth, New York City - you can't take it with you, Chicago- A raisin in the Sun, New York City- Hamilton

The poetics

Aristotle defined a tragedy as a serious work with a hero who is great and good but has a flaw that brings down destruction on himself or herself

Elements of drama

Plot, character, theme, diction, music, spectacle

Genres of Drama

Tragedy, comedy (comedy of manners; satire), melodrama, musical, fantasy

Protagonist

great, of noble rank; must have good qualities otherwise there is nothing tragic about punishing them

Dramatic structure

Inciting incident, point of attack, exposition, foreshadowing, complications, climax, conclusion

The blueprint

The script

Theme

What the play is about

Plot

Choosing the most dynamic moments in a story to re-create onstage is one of the playwright's most important tasks

Character

Creating characters that are three-dimensional, have consistency and yet can surprise us, and can change or grow during the course of the play will determine now an audience embraces a theatre event

Diction

A sign of weak playwrighting is when the characters all seem to sound alike; in a well written play, each character speaks for oneself and only that character would say that line in that situation

Revision and rewriting

Plays are not written they are rewritten

Dialogue

A novelist may explain now a character feels or describe what action takes place, but a playwright must do it all with dialogue.

Stageability

Inherent ability of something, such as a script or concept, to be effectively presented or performed on a physical stage

Playwrights that create the script for a musical

Librettist, lyricist, and composer

Option

Amount of money paid to a playwright to secure exclusive rights to produce the script

Royalty

How a playwright is paid. Fee for each performance, the amount depending on the level of the theatre production

Public domain

A written work that has no copyright and is not owned by any author or publisher

Subsidiary rights

These rights include income that comes after a play or musical has opened

Dramatist guild

Professional organization for playwrights and acts something like a labor union

Pulitzer Prize

Most prestigious award for playwrights

Eugene O'Neill

America's first world-class playwright and, in the opinion of many, our greatest writer of plays; A Moon for the Misbegotten

Oscar Hammerstein

Perhaps the single most important figure in the American musical theatre, even though he never wrote a note of music; his work did more than any other writer did to make the musical into a recognized art form

Neil Simon

America's Most commercially successful playwrights; primarily a comic writer then becomes more famous for his seriocomic plays

Tennessee Williams

America's most poetic playwright; The glass menagerie (1945)

August Wilson

Most commercially and critically successful african-american playwright in the history of the American theatre

Acting vs. Role playing

Acting is pretending to be someone or something you're not whereas roleplaying is adjusting who you are to fit into a scenario

Thespis

Ancient Greek poet (first human to appear on stage as an actor playing a character in a play)

Denis Diderot and the paradox of the actor.

He suggested that in performance the portrayal ofacharacter merges and feeds Off of the personality of the actor

The spine of the character

Goal or objective that the character has deep inside that drives everything he or she says or does

The magic if

Ask yourself as the actor how you would personally react it put in the position of the character

emotional memory

Recall feelings experienced in one's past

Stanislavsky's system of acting

He said that an actor learns ones art not by watching other actors but by observing real life

Lee Strasberg's Method acting

Placed the actor's emotional connection to the characters and the situation above all else

External approaches to acting

An actor develops a character from the outside in; costume, props, voice, motions

Internal approaches to acting

Actor first studies the motivation and objectives of the character

Actor's tools

One's body, one's mind, one's knowledge

Upstage

The part of the stage farthest from the audience

Downstage

The part of the stage closest to the audience

Improvisation

An acting exercise where the performer is the author and interpreter of a scene

Ad-libbing

Dialogue made up on the spot, in case of an emergency, such as a prop missing, a mishap with scenery, a forgotten line, or an actor who fails to enter on cue

Green room

Backstage room where actors wait until they go on stage

Union for actors, singers, and dancers in theatre

Actors’ equity Association